“WHOSE SPIRIT?”

            

Pentecost is coming up again so it’s time to rummage around for our red stuff to strut on the day so we can celebrate the coming of the Spirit giving birth to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We recall Jesus breaking the news to his first disciples that he will be leaving them forever but in his place will come the Spirit to be their constant companion.

This is not something to be “spooked” about despite its earlier translation as the “Holy Ghost” bringing up all those ghost stories we may have enjoyed telling one another as children. When you look at it, it has been quite common, then and now, to talk about “spirit”, particularly the spirit of some one close to us accompanying us in our memory long after they have gone.

Since last Pentecost we have farewelled several friends close to us. They no longer fill those familiar places. We have attended their funeral services and see their images now reduced to a picture on the front cover of the order of service celebrating their life. We know we shall never see them again but from time to time we experience something of their spirit welling up in our memories urging us to emulate a sample of their qualities as part of us. This is what Jesus meant when he said the spirit would take his place.

We need this spirit more now than ever before. We have cause for concern about the growing meanness we find in the world around us. Along with extreme weathers around the globe we find extreme attitudes and behaviour reflected in politics and religion, stifling moderate voices. Our last federal election saw the dreadful spectacle of the contenders for government vying for the mantle of meanness towards desperate asylum seekers. TV programs now cruelly mock other cultures within our midst.

Is this the sort of spirit we want nurtured in the society of the future? Surely, we yearn for a better way. Out of those whom we have farewelled recently the spirit of one stays with us. When we said goodbye to David Ellis we lost a friend who was without words. We lost a friend who could scarcely move his afflicted body yet we know the influence he had among us will stay among us. Through him, we have become more open and inclusive. We experienced his love when that was as much as he could give. We have become enriched because of him.

David could look us in the eye and engage us despite a world now hurrying by with individuals isolated with head down each immersed in an electronic security blanket, communicating not with eye contact but with thumbs on keys oblivious to surroundings even at the risk of their own safety.

Federal Budgets widen the all too wide gaps between people, forgetting the way that Jesus took healing others giving them the hand-up they needed to resume life. Despite the unfairness of his limitations and his total dependence upon the good will of others, David in his powerlessness bridged many gaps around him and helped make us the people we were called to be.

David’s spirit, I pray, will stay long with us. It will remind us of the purpose of the Spirit that Jesus left behind to present to us both with words and without words what this aching world is meant to become despite all the forces arraigned unfairly against us.

Let Jesus breathe on us again this Pentecost so that his spirit, reminded by the saints who have left us, becomes our spirit living and working for redemption around us.

“WHO KILLED JESUS?”

I enjoy a good “Whodunnit” where I try to get into the mind of the detective working from whatever clues are available to see if I can spot the killer before the others do. Not all cases are closed and that is the challenge. Are we sure, for instance, that we know who killed Jesus?

Bringing suspects before the courts hasn’t been fruitful. The common response, even in the ICAC, is an almost automatic loss of memory with the words tumbling out, “I cannot recall.” Fortunately, in this case, we have at least four reliable witnesses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John who have faithfully recorded irrefutable evidence that the murder took place.

The soldiers who hammered those spikes into healing hands claim they were only acting under the Governor’s orders. This Governor has been exposed in our traditional creeds when Jesus was described as having “suffered under Pontius Pilate”. Pilate pleads that the baying crowd would have had him reported to Rome so he acted “under duress”. The people point their fingers at Caiaphas and the other religious leaders – “They made us do it.” Caiaphas is on record for excusing himself with those unforgettable words, “It is expedient that one man should die for the people”.

Fingers, disclaiming responsibility, are pointing everywhere. Lawyers thrive today because taking responsibility for what goes wrong is simply “not done”. Victims cruelly suffer and suffer even more when no one can be held accountable. Obeyed most scrupulously is the Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not be found out”.

Likewise, the killing of Jesus is commemorated as something inexplicable that happened so long ago but we are rightly disturbed when we sense ourselves more involved than we intended to be. Somehow, all these people there at the time remind us too much of what we tend to say and do. Consequences happen and we find that we “have done those things we ought not to have done and left undone those things we ought to have done”.

Looking around at the wrongs that are happening around us and the good that is left undone, we can only look within to find that we have fallen short in rectifying the situation. Lent up to Good Friday reminds us only too well that suspicion for the killing of Jesus does not simply rest on those there at the time, but that we are implicated as complicit after the event. Human behaviour, then and now, have continued to contribute to the steps that led Jesus to the loneliest of hills outside Jerusalem’s wall.

Yes, in this climactic twist, this “Whodunnit” has nailed the killers – you, me, and the whole damned world. The one to be killed, Jesus, looks at us all knowingly, and still goes on his tragic way. His murder becomes his self-sacrifice because he knows.

Easter occurs for us so that we have that new opportunity to live as if Jesus has come back to us again to put behind us that behaviour which craves victims for our ego, and to live that life, expressed in Jesus, that God wants for his created world.

“LIFE IS LENT”

     

Facebook can be such a time waster if you let it but now and again, a real gem appears. Recently celebrated in the US (and further) was Martin Luther King Day, and one of the posts I thought too good to keep to myself. It was just in time for Lent. This is what he said the year before his assassination.

“You may be 38 years as I happen to be. And one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause.

“And you refuse to do it because you are afraid … You refuse to do it because you want to live longer … You’re afraid you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized, or that you will lose your popularity, or you are afraid that some one will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house, so you refuse to take the stand.

“Well, you may go on and live until you are 90 but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the announcement of an earlier death of that spirit.”

Martin Luther King, jr (1929-1968)

In Lent, so my lectionary card tells me, the Church remembers the life and ministry of Jesus and renews its commitment to him in Christian discipleship. That’s the short version of it. However, I’ve been told that the Church, as an organisation, must have a poor marketing strategy because its founder and head neither became a billionaire through the market nor lived to a great age.

Martin Luther King was killed, aged 39, as was Dietrich Bonhoeffer over 20 years before him. And we are called to follow Jesus Christ who two millennia ago also was killed in the prime of his life. Lent includes that fact otherwise why are we here committing our lives to one believed by so many not to “have made it”?

This is where MLK (for short) has a point. Would we be here at all had Jesus put his safety first and survived to a great age with descendants all around him? Would he be anything more than a bare footnote in historical memory, if that?

We are here because Jesus Christ is the source of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer and MLK and many nameless persons have said and done since that first Good Friday two thousand years ago. And Jesus Christ is the source of all that because he saw the great cause of the Kingdom of God and called upon those near and far to come out of the darkness into that light. Yes, he might have made a lot of money and settled down with a loving family.

Instead, he saw need and gave a hand up. He saw despair and gave hope. He saw sheep without a shepherd and lay down his life for those sheep.

When we talk about his “life and ministry” it’s not about our own which has been comfortable by his standards. It’s about a life and ministry cut brutally short because he put himself in peril that we might be spared that peril.

            But whoever follows Jesus may be called to take those same risks he took, like Bonhoeffer, MLK, and the host of others before and after them. While we often wonder why the world around us doesn’t seem to “get the message”, the spirit of this Jesus Christ enables us to be the message.

            Lent calls us to remember the life and ministry of Jesus, yes, but more than that, we are called to keep that spirit alive to inspire those yet to come.

“LIGHT ON AUSTRALIA DAY”

            S E R M O N CNR1071                               3pp

Epiphany 3a       Mosman 26 Jan 2014, 9.30am

Isaiah 9:1-4; Ps 27:1,4-9; Matt 4:12-23; 1 Cor 1:10-18

Matt 4:16f

1          THE GLARE OF DARKNESS

1.1       Extreme weather

The summer sun has been beating down upon us.

Even with its glaring brightness

there is that sense of darkness upon the face of God’s earth.

The ferocity of bushfires here and in California,

cyclones, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, and storms,

both natural and man-made disasters bring 21^st darkness for many.

Climate change, or rather climate extremism, has come upon us.

Human involvement has been denied

mainly, I suspect, to escape responsibility for what we do or not do.

Extremes of weather intensify extremes of behaviour expressed socially, politically and religiously.

1.2       Walking and sitting in darkness (Isa 9:2; Matt 4:16)

Before we can appreciate the light

we have to recognise our walking in darkness.

Isaiah writes in 9:2 of people “walking in darkness”.

By the time we come to Matthew 4:16,

they are described as “people who sat in darkness”

Have we arrived at that state where instead of groping through the gloom

we now sit in a form of collective depression

believing that nothing can be done?

2          REPENT!

2.1       The Kingdom of God is at hand (Matt 4:17)

Whether the people walk or sit in darkness they have seen a great light.

The Gospel reminds us again today, as if we need reminding,

that the light coming upon us in this season of Epiphany is Jesus.

John the Baptist has been arrested by Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee,

and Jesus has deliberately moved from Nazareth to Capernaum

further into this territory.

Again he continues the message begun by JB.

“Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mt 4:17)

2.2       Not for turning?

“Repent” is a dirty word in our 21^st century.

Nobody really likes it.

It really means stop what you are doing because you are going the wrong way and turn about and go a different way.

It has been easy for us to feel irritated when we are driving and our navigator tells us we are heading in the wrong direction.

It means a change in thinking, in feeling, and in doing.

Many admired Margaret Thatcher when she described herself

as “This lady’s not for turning.”

Towards the end she was removed from high office by her colleagues because of her rigidity.

The Iron Lady finished by losing her mind.

3          THE CHURCH COMMUNITY (1 Cor 1:10-18)

3.1       Repenting from exclusivity

Paul effectively calls the church in Corinth to repent.

They had to turn about and change their behaviour towards one another.

The Corinthian church community was less than a decade old

but already it had formed into exclusive groups, based on different cultures and loyalties.

Even today churches all around the world

are known more by exclusive differences rather than by co-operating.

3.2       The light of the world (Matt 5:14)

While Jesus has come to be the light for us

in our present 21^st century darkness,

in our turning around towards him as the light,

we are called ourselves to be that light

as Matthew’s gospel reminds us later in chapter 5:14

 “You are the light of the world.”

4          TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

4.1       Climate extremism

This means that in turning around ourselves,

we are called to be part of the world’s present need to turn around.

We, as the world, have to take responsibility for the climate extremism

coming upon us all over the world.

Human greed is bringing this world undone.

We have altered the world’s climate for the sake of making more money.

4.2       Deliverance with attitude change

I cannot say in all honesty whether we are or are not too late for this world

to be delivered from climate extremism.

Already, movements across the world call for simplistic

and sometimes violent answers to what faces us.

We know from experience that this does not work.

Jesus promises deliverance wherever there is a change of attitude,

and attitude today has been the problem.

4.3       Being just a small candle

We have heard how Jesus calls his disciples to share his risky road with him and to deliver his same message.

We have to face the fact that Jesus knew that,

like the prophets, he would not be heard,

and it is no shame on us that we experience that same rejection.

Nevertheless, the light of Jesus can stay with us

even if we be just a small candle lighting up the darkness

and showing how to turn around.

This is our message for Australia Day 2014.

Let us be the light of Jesus coming into the world.